What You Will Learn

Many people do not realize that science was actually developed in Christian Europe by men who assumed that God created an orderly universe. If the universe is a product of random chance or a group of gods that interfere in the universe, there is really no reason to expect order in nature. Many of the founders of the principle scientific fields, such as Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, were believers in a recently created earth. The idea that science cannot accept a creationist perspective is a denial of scientific history.

To help us understand that science has practical limits, it is useful to divide science into two different areas: operational science and historical (origins) science. Operational science deals with testing and verifying ideas in the present and leads to the production of useful products like computers, cars, and satellites. Historical (origins) science involves interpreting evidence from the past and includes the models of evolution and special creation. Recognizing that everyone has presuppositions that shape the way they interpret the evidence is an important step in realizing that historical science is not equal to operational science. Because no one was there to witness the past (except God), we must interpret it based on a set of starting assumptions. Creationists and evolutionists have the same evidence; they just interpret it within a different framework. Evolution denies the role of God in the universe, and creation accepts His eyewitness account—the Bible—as the foundation for arriving at a correct understanding of the universe.

What Your Textbook Says About Science

Evolutionary Concept

Glencoe

PH-Campbell

PH-Miller

Holt

Articles

It is not necessary to
distinguish between
historical and
operational science.

11–23,
1060–
1061

19, 299

3–14

14–
20

1:1, 1:2,
3:1

Observability, testability,
repeatability, and
falsifiability are the
hallmarks of the
scientific method.

11–23

27, 37–38, 305

10, 14, 369,
T537

19

1:1, 1:2,
1:3

There are some
questions science cannot
answer.

21–22

38

5–6

—

1:1, 1:3

Questions about
behavior can be
answered by asking
“why” questions.

—

51, 54

T870

824

1:1, 1:3

Evolution was not
observed, but we can
still understand how it
happened.

396–397

51, 54

410

—

1:2, 1:3,
3:4

Biblical creation is
religion, and evolution is
science.

—

—

3

277

1:1, 1:2,
1:3

Note: Page numbers preceded by “T” indicate items from the teacher notes found
in the margins of the Teacher’s Edition.

What We Really Know about Science

If an idea is not testable, repeatable, observable, and falsifiable, it is not considered scientific.

In its original form science simply meant “knowledge.” When
someone says today that they work in the field of science, a different
picture often comes to mind. Science, in the view of an outspoken
part of the scientific community, is the systematic method of gaining
knowledge about the universe by allowing only naturalistic or
materialistic explanations and causes. The quote on page 19 reflects
this attitude. Science in this sense automatically rules out God and
the possibility that He created the universe because supernatural
claims, it is asserted, cannot be tested and repeated. If an idea is
not testable, repeatable, observable, and falsifiable, it is not considered
scientific. The denial of supernatural events limits the depth
of understanding that science can have and the types of questions
science can ask. We may define naturalism and materialism as:

Naturalism: a belief denying that an event or object has a supernatural
significance; specifically, the doctrine that scientific laws are
adequate to account for all phenomena.

Materialism: a belief claiming that physical matter is the only or fundamental
reality and that all organisms, processes, and phenomena
can be explained as manifestations or interactions of matter.

The problem with the above definition of science is that, even
though naturalistic science claims to be neutral and unbiased, it
starts with a bias. The quote from Dr. Todd on page 19 demonstrates
that bias: only matter and energy exist and all explanations
and causes must be directly related to the laws that matter and
energy follow. Even if the amazingly intricate structure of flagella in
bacteria appears so complex that it must have a designer, naturalistic
science cannot accept that idea because this idea falls outside
the realm of naturalism/materialism. Many scientists have claimed
that allowing supernatural explanations into our understanding of
the universe would cause us to stop looking for answers and just
declare, “God wanted to do it that way.” This is, of course, false.

The ability to study the world around us is only reasonable
because there is a Lawgiver who established the laws of nature. Most
people do not realize that modern science was founded by men who
believed that nature can be studied because it follows the laws given
to it by the Lawgiver. Johannes Kepler, one of the founders of astronomy,
said that science was “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”
Many founders of scientific disciplines, such as Bacon, Newton,
Kepler, Galileo, Pascal, Boyle, Dalton, Linnaeus, Mendel, Maxwell,
and Kelvin were Bible-believing Christians. As a matter of fact, the
most discerning historians and philosophers of science have recognized
that the very existence of modern science had its origins in a
culture at least nominally committed to a biblical worldview. (See www.answersingenesis.org/go/bios.)

Science has been hijacked by those with a materialistic worldview and exalted as the ultimate means of obtaining knowledge about the world.

What, then, should Christians think of science? Science has been
hijacked by those with a materialistic worldview and exalted as the
ultimate means of obtaining knowledge about the world. Proverbs
tells us that the fear of God, not science, is the beginning of knowledge.
In a biblical worldview, scientific observations are interpreted
in light of the truth that is found in the Bible. If conclusions contradict
the truth revealed in Scripture, the conclusions are rejected. The
same thing happens in naturalistic science. Any conclusion that does
not have a naturalistic explanation is rejected.

The words creation and evolution can be used in many different
ways. Evolution will be used in this book to describe the naturalistic
process that is alleged to have turned molecules into man
over billions of years. As creation is used through out this book, it
is intended to describe the supernatural acts of God who created
the universe and everything in it in six, approximately 24-hour
days, about 6,000 years ago. This perspective is often referred to as
young-earth creationism. The true history of the universe is revealed
to us from God’s eyewitness perspective in the Bible. This history
can be summarized as the 7 C’s of history: Creation of the universe,
Corruption of the universe as a result of man’s sin, the judgment
of mankind in the Catastrophe of Noah’s Flood, Confusion of languages
at Babel, Christ coming to earth to live a righteous life and
then to pay for our sins on the Cross, and the future Consummation
when God creates the New Heaven and New Earth. This history
serves as a foundation for interpreting evidence in the biblical
creationist’s worldview.

Making a distinction between two types of scientific study
helps us to understand the limitations of naturalistic presuppositions
in science:

The examples of science used in the
textbooks show only operational
(observational) science. This type of
science, which makes observations
and repeated experiments in the
present, allows us to produce
technology that benefits mankind.
Evolution does not fit within the
definition of operational science
and should be classified as historical
(origins) science

Operational science is the type of science that allows us to
understand how DNA codes for proteins in cells. It is the type of
science that has allowed us to cure and treat diseases, put a man
on the moon, build satellites and telescopes, and make products
that are useful to humans. Biblical creationists believe that God
has created a universe that uses a set of natural laws that operate
consistently in the universe. Understanding how those laws operate
is the basis for scientific thinking.

Some events defy natural laws. Christians refer to these
things as miracles, but naturalistic science must find a way
to explain these occurrences naturally. This approach rejects
miracles in the Bible because they cannot be explained using
natural laws. Such scientists occasionally try to explain the miracles
in the Bible as natural phenomena, but this ultimately undermines
the authority of God and His Word.

Historical (Origins) Science: interpreting evidence from past events
based on a presupposed philosophical point of view.

The past is not directly observable, testable, repeatable, or falsifiable;
so interpretations of past events present greater challenges
than interpretations involving operational science. Neither creation
nor evolution is directly observable, testable, repeatable, or falsifiable.
Each is based on certain philosophical assumptions about
how the earth began. Naturalistic evolution assumes that there was
no God, and biblical creation assumes that there was a God who
created everything in the universe. Starting from two opposite presuppositions
and looking at the same evidence, the explanations of
the history of the universe are very different. The argument is not
over the evidence—the evidence is the same—it is over the way the
evidence should be interpreted.

Evolutionists often claim that people misuse the word “theory”
when discussing science and don’t make a distinction between a scientific
theory and the common use of the word “theory.” You may
say, “I have a theory about why Mr. Jones’ hair looks funny” but that
theory has never been compared to a broad set of observations. This
is not the sense of a theory in science.

In light of this, few would argue that there are different types of
theories. So it would be good to refine this term further to avoid any
baiting and switching of the word “theory”. Just as it was valuable
to distinguish between operational and historical science, it would
be good to do the same with operational and historical theories. A
scientific operational theory is:

Operational Theory: an explanation of a set of facts based on a broad
set of repeatable and testable observations that is generally accepted
within a group of scientists.

That evolution has been elevated to the status of an operational
theory (and “fact” in the opinion of some) is not due to the strength
of the evidence, but in spite of it. Because evolutionary ideas are
interpretations of past events, they are not as well-founded as testable
scientific theories like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity or Newton’s
Theory of Gravity. These theories offer predictable models
and the ability to conduct experiments to determine their validity
in different circumstances. Molecules-to-man evolution does not
offer this opportunity because these events happened in the past.
Therefore, evolution is not an operational theory. For these reasons
evolution could be considered an historical theory, along with creation
models and other origins theories.

Historical Theory: an explanation of past events based on the interpretation
of evidence that is available in the present.

It is important to recognize that people’s presuppositions influence the way
they interpret evidence. Evolution is based on a reasoning process that rejects
God. Creation starts from the authority of God’s Word. Your presuppositions
are like a pair of glasses that you wear to look at the world around you.

Evolution fits this definition of theory, but it relies on the
assumption of naturalism. In the naturalistic scientific community,
evolution has become a theory that is assumed to be an established
fact and not an explanation. Evolution is the prevailing paradigm,
and most scientists have stopped questioning the underlying assumptions
that the theory is based upon. Creationists develop theories,
too, in light of biblical truth, but they are not as widely accepted
by scientists. All interpretations (theories) of the past are based on
assumptions and cannot be equated with facts that are observable in
the present. This holds true for creationist or evolutionist theories.
(See article 1:3 on page 29 for more on this topic.)

Evolution also relies heavily on the assumption of uniformitarianism—
a belief that the present is the key to the past. According to
uniformitarians, the processes in the universe have been occurring at
a relatively constant rate. One of these processes is the rate of rock
formation and erosion. If rocks form or erode at a certain rate in the
present, uniformitarians believe that they must have always formed
or eroded at nearly the same rate. This assumption is accepted even
though there are no observations of the rate of erosion from the distant
past and there is no way to empirically test the erosion rate of
the past. However, the Bible makes it very clear that some events of
the past were radically different from those we commonly observe
today. Noah’s Flood, for example, would have devastated the face of
the earth and created a landscape of billions of dead things buried in
layers of rock, which is exactly what we see.

Good operational science can provide us with answers to many questions about the world around us and how it operates, but it cannot answer the questions of where we came from and why we are here.

Just as evolutionists weren’t there to see evolution happen over
several billion years, neither were creationists there to see the events
of the six days of creation. The difference is that creationists have the
Creator’s eyewitness account of the events of creation, while evolutionists
must create a story to explain origins without the supernatural.
Just because many scientists believe the story does not make the story
true. Believing the Bible and the information that has been revealed
to us by our Creator gives us a foundation for thinking—including
our thinking about science. Good operational science can provide us
with answers to many questions about the world around us and how
it operates, but it cannot answer the questions of where we came from
and why we are here. Those questions are outside the scope of operational
science. But we are not left without an answer. God has given
us the answers to those questions in His Word, the Bible.

Reference Articles

Scientific theories must be testable and capable of being
proven false. Neither evolution nor biblical creation qualifies
as a scientific theory in this sense, because each deals with
historical events that cannot be repeated. Both evolution
and creation are based on unobserved assumptions about
past events. It is inconsistent to say that evolution qualifies
as a scientific theory while creation does not. Both have
scientific character by attempting to correlate scientific
data within a certain framework (model).

No theory of origins can avoid using philosophical
statements as a foundation. Creationists use a supernatural
act by an Intelligent Designer to explain the origin of the
universe and the life we see on earth. Evolutionists do not
allow any supernatural explanation as a foundation but
insist that only natural laws and processes can be used as
explanations. Both are worldviews used to interpret the data.
The data is the same; the interpretations arrive at different
conclusions based on the starting assumptions. Allowing only
evolutionary teaching in public schools promotes an atheistic
worldview, just as much as teaching only creation would
promote a theistic worldview. Students are indoctrinated to
believe they are meaningless products of evolution and that
no God exists to whom they are accountable.

Life on earth was either created or it developed in some
progressive manner; there are no other alternatives. While
there are many versions of both creation and evolution, both
cannot be true.

Making observations about living organisms can increase understanding about
many aspects of biology. But it is important to recognize the limitations when you
cross into historical science.

Accepting that God created the universe in the way that
He said He did is a common stumbling block for many who
want to accept the interpretation promoted by evolutionary
scientists. There are many reasons why the God of the Bible
would not have used evolution and the big bang to create
the universe. Those who hold to this position are putting
man’s fallible interpretation of scientific data into the text
of Genesis.

Accepting the big bang or evolution as factual accounts
of the origin of life and the universe is not scientific.
They are interpretations of facts. The assumptions that
underlie the interpretations are based on the idea that man
can determine truth independent of God. Operational
science is based on repeatable observations and falsifiable
statements while historical science is based on interpreting
data that cannot be repeated. Operational science leads
to computers and space shuttles as products of repeatable
processes. Historical science leads to shifting interpretations
that are not reliable.

The only way to arrive at a true interpretation is to start
with true assumptions. Since the Bible is the eyewitness
account of the Creator of the universe, it is the best starting
point for interpreting past events.

All scientists, creationist or evolutionist, have the
same evidence; the difference is the presuppositions that
are used to interpret that evidence. All reasoning is based
on presuppositions. Biblical creationists start with the
assumption that the Bible provides an accurate eyewitness
history of the universe as a basis for scientific thought.
Evolutionists begin with the presupposition that only
natural laws can be used to explain the facts. Facts exist
in the present, and our interpretations are an attempt to
connect the past to the present. The evolutionists must
assume everything about the past, while biblical creationists
have the Bible as a “time machine” that can provide valuable
insight into the past.

It is not true to say that there is different evidence for creation and evolution.
Everyone has the same evidence—it is just interpreted in different ways.

If someone expects you to argue that the Bible or
creation is true without using the Bible as evidence, they are
stacking the deck in their favor. They are insisting that facts
are neutral and that truth can be determined independent
of God. Facts are always interpreted, and the Word of God
is absolutely trustworthy. Demonstrating how the Bible
can be used to effectively explain a fact, like the presence of
fossils, demonstrates that it is valid as a filter for interpreting
facts. Many people do not realize how their presuppositions
impact their thinking. Exposing a person’s presuppositions
will help them to see how they filter the facts, and then
challenging the origin of those presuppositions will force
them to evaluate their stance.

If science depends on naturalistic explanations, it
must accept that our thoughts are simply the products
of chemical reactions that evolved from random chance.
How can you ultimately rely on randomness to evolve the
correct way of thinking? If there is no God, ultimately,
philosophically, how can one talk about reality? How can
one even rationally believe that there is such a thing as
truth, let alone decide what it is?

Questions to Consider

Do all scientists believe in naturalistic evolution? Why or why
not?

There are two contenders for the history of life on earth: some
form of naturalism (evolution) or supernatural creation. Are
there really any alternatives to some form of naturalistic evolution
in science if science is restricted to naturalism?

Since evolution and creation are both based on religious
beliefs, why should one be taught in public schools and not
the other?

Should there be a distinction between experimental (operational)
science and historical science?

Since a naturalistic approach to science can only refer to materialistic
explanations, how can naturalists use logic if logic is
not a material part of the universe?

Is it necessary for science to allow only naturalism?

Would all scientific thought and advancement end if supernatural
creation was accepted as a possible model for how the
universe and life on earth began?

Why is supernatural creation considered to be a “science stopper”
and not a “science starter,” considering that most of the
founding fathers of science believed in the Bible and a supernatural
creation event?

If an all-knowing Creator God exists, wouldn’t it be logical to
say that He knows about the scientific laws He created? Why
not use what He says as a foundation for scientific thinking?

Evolution Exposed: Biology

This book helps teens to discern the chronic bias towards belief in evolution that permeates today’s three most popular high school biology textbooks. Virtually every chapter in each of the secular textbooks contains implied or explicit references to evolutionary beliefs, which are misrepresented as irrefutable facts. However, in Evolution Exposed: Biology these misrepresentations are cross-referenced with online articles and publications that provide both scientific and biblical answers. Key terms are defined, articles are summarized and false ideas are refuted.